"The time rule… it's more complicated than I expected."
Cillian slowly opened his eyes.
After nearly an entire day of editing, he had completed the foundational structure for the time rule. But a new problem crept up,one far more delicate than anything before.
The flow rate.
It needed to be precisely calibrated.
If it deviated even slightly,if the chaotic law dominating the Endless Abyss interfered it could unravel everything. A temporal storm would tear through the planes, collapsing the entire domain within moments.
Time rules weren't like elemental rules or gravity. They weren't just foundational,they were volatile. If time fell apart, the world would follow.
Cillian took a deep breath.
"System," he said calmly, "show me every time flow template compatible with a high-chaos world."
As he continued weaving, streams of data from the system's template archive began flowing past his mind's eye.
"So many… I had no idea time could be defined in so many ways."
One entry caught his attention: Adaptive Time Flow.
A system-calibrated structure that allowed time to fluctuate dynamically—adjusting itself in harmony with chaos, not against it.
"Ingenious," Cillian muttered. "How long would it have taken for me come up with something this elegant."
Satisfied, he selected the adaptive model and carefully integrated it into his time rule. Then came the final step,infusing it into the core of the Endless Abyss.
The change was immediate.
Where once the world sat in eerie stillness, time began to move.
Heat shimmered, winds stirred, the flow of magic rippled across continents.
Cause and effect returned. Growth, decay, transformation,life,could now take root.
The Endless Abyss… had awakened.
Cillian's eyes lit up. "Now it's real. Now it breathes."
Even if each plane still obeyed its own version of chaos, the world as a whole had begun to stabilize under this elastic rule of time. He watched the abyssal layers writhe and shift with purpose.
And yet, as he quietly observed the world he had shaped with his own hands, he didn't notice the faint flicker of change within his own Divine Fire.
Meanwhile in the observatory room most instructors had long since shifted their focus away from Cillian's project. In their eyes, his work was still incomplete, still far too unstable.
"Look at Zach Kingston's world," someone pointed out. "He's already transformed his origin into an energy matrix."
"No way. Already? How long has he been at it?"
"What's the formula?"
"It looks like natural energy. He's setting up a cohabiting ecosystem, druids, elves, maybe even an entire plant-based civilization."
"That's a potential Transcendent Domain," another tutor chimed in.
Every head turned toward Zachs' feed. He stood high above his domain, channeling vast threads of luminous green energy into the terrain. His world was lush and breathable,atmosphere, hydrology, temperature,all within stable thresholds.
And now, he was preparing to inject Gaia Consciousness.
"The mother of all things," someone muttered. "World-soul theory. Textbook perfection."
"If he succeeds, he can guide the entire ecosystem like a god. He'll see every root, every spark."
Zachs' mind connected to the world's core. His awareness expanded across every corner of the terrain.
And then, the first living thing emerged.
Just one.
But it was enough to make the instructors gasp.
"The World Tree," one whispered, stunned.
A small green seedling pushed through the dirt, radiating power. Its roots shot outward, piercing rock, anchoring in elemental fault lines. It reached across continents, reclaiming and transforming dead land.
"Brilliant. He's not just stabilizing the world,he's giving it a guardian."
"Two birds with one stone," another nodded.
The World Tree wasn't just an anchor,it was a titan. A living core of power that would defend the world and evolve with it.
"Look at his Divine Fire value!"
Zachs' name surged up the university rankings. His Divine Fire stat spiked past Leif and Morgan Lins , locking into first place.
"Outstanding," Warren said with rare approval. "This… this is what a Transcendent project looks like."
But just as everyone relaxed
"Wait—hold on!" one tutor shouted. "There's movement on the list again!"
"What now?"
"Someone just overtook Him!"
Heads whipped toward the Divine Fire display.
"Who is it?"
"…It's Cillian. Cillian Carter!"
"What?!"
"Impossible! He hasn't even create a single creature!"
"No, look again, he perfected the energy conversion matrix!"
"That's not enough to beat a World Tree!"
Warren narrowed his eyes. "Unless…"
Another tutor checked the logs, hand trembling.
"He… he didn't implement one formula,he implemented dozens."
Silence fell over the room.
Warren opened Cillian's world file and skimmed the compiled data. His eyes twitched. He gritted his teeth.
"…Is this kid insane?"
All around him, the other instructors had the same expression. Disbelief. Bewilderment. Awe.
Because Cillian Carter hadn't just created an energy formula—
He had infused dozens of unique, even contradictory, energy systems into a single domain.
And somehow, his Endless Abyss had absorbed them all.
One of the mentors blinked hard, stunned by what he saw.
They had heard the what happened,how Cillians "Endless Abyss" supposedly had more energy formulas than any project before it. But seeing it with their own eyes? That was something else entirely.
"How the hell did he manage this?" a teacher asked, rubbing his temples. "If I'm not mistaken, the record until now was what,twelve formulas? Across our entire history."
"Right,and that was already considered insane" another tutor muttered. "Isn't he afraid his Divine Domain will explode?!"
"No," Warren said coldly, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the projection. "He's not afraid."
"He's a genius."
A hush fell over the room as Warren continued.
"I don't know exactly how he's done it, but… he's using the chaos rule as the backbone. That's the key. Instead of trying to control each formula with strict order, he's letting chaos blend them together naturally."
"Look closely—those formulas are fighting for dominance across the planes, but they're also slowly stabilizing. Merging. It's chaotic, yes, but it's working."
Warren took a long breath, then muttered as if half to himself:
"No graduate has ever used chaos itself as the foundation of a world before."
He paused.
"Could this kid really be trying to build a low-altitude world?"
Meanwhile, inside the world itself,
Cillian had just finished adding the final energy conversion formula to the Endless Abyss.A red flash surged across the prototype world as a new trait [Blood Inheritance] was injected into the system.
He exhaled deeply and smiled faintly.
"It's done."
The Endless Abyss was finally stable.
The laws of time and space were in place. Gravity was active. Elemental rules worked. The energy formulas, chaotic as they were, had found a kind of twisted balance.
For the first time, the world truly functioned.
"It should be able to give birth to a soul soon," he murmured.
Then his expression shifted slightly.
"…But that's not enough."
As part of the graduation project, every student had to create intelligent life,life with a soul. Not just to prove the world was habitable, but to fuel belief, to generate divine fire… to demonstrate that their world could evolve, grow, and support an ecosystem.
And right now, Cillian had no life at all.
"The world is too chaotic," he admitted. "Creatures will evolve eventually, sure. But if the first ones all die too fast, that's a problem."
Worse, time was running out.
It had already been a week since the projects began, and while Cillian's divine fire score had skyrocketed past the others… he still had no living beings.
Without life, the world couldn't be called complete.
"Luckily, I've got the system," Cillian said, opening the Life Creation menu.
Thousands of templates appeared.
"Way too many. I need something fast."
He narrowed it down.
"Show me the most efficient path to create a powerful creature in the shortest time."
The system responded instantly, but the top result gave him pause.
"…Huh."
According to the plan, he needed to tear off a fragment of his own soul. That fragment would serve as the seed of life, descending into the Endless Abyss to become the First Fallen.
The soul would degrade as it traveled through the chaotic planes, gathering energy and absorbing the essence of each layer, until it became something entirely new.
It would act as a base template—splintering across the planes and giving birth to dozens of unique lifeforms, each adapted to its own environment.
And then, using his soul affinity, Cillian would link himself to the entire abyss—becoming its new will, its abyssal consciousness, controlling every aspect from within.
"…It's dangerous," he muttered. "But it's worth trying."
Without further hesitation, he closed his eyes and focused.
His divine fire flared.
A sliver of soul peeled away and passed through the crystal walls of the planes, dropping like a comet into the chaotic abyss below.
And everything changed.
The world, once empty, now stirred with awareness.
Each plane, from top to bottom, felt the presence of the soul,and fought for it.
The higher planes, where conditions were slightly more stable, reached first. But just as they began to pull it in…
…a lower plane,far closer to the chaotic bottom,emitted a stronger pull.
And the soul fragment kept falling.
Plane after plane tried to intercept it, feeding it energy, corrupting it, mutating it.
But it kept falling.
Deeper and deeper, the soul gathered power. Like a magnet for malice, it grew more twisted. More complex. More alive.
Planes scrambled, snarled, and snapped at it like wild dogs, desperate for ownership.
And finally, at the very bottom, in the darkest, most chaotic layer of the Endless Abyss…
…a new life was born.
[First Fallen]
The abyss had its first creature.